I hear on the eleven o’clock news that my twin brother is not a murderer. A battery of psychological tests has been run, an expert on torture has given his own verdict on national television, and finally they are letting him come home. I watch it all unfold through a news feed, stay glued to my television at night, waiting for the truth about Henry Malcolm.
It should be too horrible to watch. I should turn it off, get on with my life. When I see myself in one of the stock photos on 48 Hours, smiling goofily on a ski slope, my arm draped around Henry’s shoulders, I don’t feel shame or regret or sadness. Maybe I should. Maybe I should seclude myself inside my house, take on some kind of monastic presence, run off the few reporters who show up at my front door looking for a sound bite.
But I do none of these things. I watch, just like you do.
* * *
Today there’s a telephone message waiting for me when I get home.
I’ve been out, walking with my notebook and thinking about my brother’s homecoming. What it could mean—what it must mean. I have ink on my left hand, one of the most annoying side effects of the disease. A word snaking across, disappearing over the wrist and then appearing again on the delta of a vein: Who?
What’s crazy is I don’t even remember writing it. This isn’t uncommon with the disease. Sometimes a stray word will appear from nowhere, written across a newspaper page or in the margin of a book. I’ve even been known to write on other people’s bodies as they sleep. Creepy, I know. I wish I could do something about it.
Now I approach the blinking answering machine light. The tabloids still call, promising me everything under the sun if I agree to talk about Henry and his lost week. Just a few days ago someone from TMZ called, offering me six figures for an interview about my brother. It would have been a chance to start over, to move somewhere else. Reinvent my life. I told them to go to hell. When I tell Henry’s story, it will be on my own terms.
The red light throbs, and I stand in the dark kitchen and let it hypnotize me. A collage of Post-its hangs over the phone, bubbled black with heavy ink, the missives incomprehensible, as they almost always are. Nothing but a reaction, an impulse to WRITE, to move my hand in a way that forms a word, a sentence, a thought. I curl my fingers around an imaginary pen, scribble air on the wall beside the telephone. My mouth waters.
Finally I reach up, hit Play.
“Jonathan Malcolm, this is Anthony Schroeder.” The voice is tight, serious. Not a reporter. I let the message run. “I’m a homicide detective with the Oldham Town Police Department. We spoke once before, after your sister-in-law . . . after the incident. I wondered if you might give me a call back. I want you to know that this has nothing to do with the fact that your brother is getting out of the hospital tomorrow. This is about Laura Malcolm. I know you had a history with her, that you were one of her closest friends, and I called to ask you—”
I erase the message.
It’s her name, just the sound of her name, that cuts me the deepest.
And anyway, I know what the detective wants. He’s been here before, sat right there in my living room, and told me about his grand plan. It will never work, I want to tell him. Not ever. It won’t work because my brother is smarter than us all.